Friday, March 13, 2009

One area where people can help me immediately -- and easily -- is to provide me with rumors and random encounters for the surface ruins of the megadungeon. I love random tables and plan to include lots of them in this project, because they're great idea mines, not to mention very useful in play. However, I find I tend to get in ruts when it comes to creating these things myself, so ...

Send me an email at the address to the right with [MEGADUNGEON] in the subject line, since that'll make it simpler for me to keep track of all this stuff. I don't want anything detailed or elaborate, though I have no objection to such things. What's important is that the rumors about the megadungeon be interesting and that the random encounters (which can include events) be similarly intriguing. I can come up with "The abbot possessed a giant diamond the size of a man's fist" rumors and "1d6+1 kobolds" encounters easliy enough on my own. What I often have trouble with are the wackier and more creative examples of the same, which is why I'd like some assistance. Refer to the background I posted the other day if you need some context for the whole thing.

Are some rumors for towns located near the ruins okay?Rumor has it...-Mysterious explosions were heard last night by a local farmer on the far side of his fields.-Someone in a nearby village had his land overtaken by a family of Ankhegs.-The blacksmith was spotted making a deal with nearby humanoids or barbarians under cover of night.-Market day is coming up and a traveling show is supposed to arrive.-A sickly local's seldom-seen wife actually died under mysterious circumstances some time ago. The man made a deal with powers unknown to bring her back as a vampire.-Every spring a child disappears from somewhere in town shortly before the first thaw of spring.-The church is haunted by the ghost of a priestess who died decades or even centuries ago. The current priest discovered her, and, against doctrine, has become the spirit's lover. (feel free to change genders according to preference)-The mayor's nephew is actually a demihuman or humanoid child, and the real child was exchanged in secret as a peace agreement.

Is there any sort of summary of where all the goals and instructions and information currently stand, or is it at this point still a matter of paging through all the blog entries?

Unfortunately, I haven't yet collected it anywhere, so it's a matter of reading entries from the past week. I'll be posting the guidelines to the website and they'll be available once the site goes live, likely early next week.

Whenever bodies are buried in the town’s graveyard on the 13th or 26th of any month, they never stay buried. Local consensus is that the bodies somehow claw their way out and walk away into the wilderness. As a result, all bodies are now buried face down (so they would did down instead of up) and never on the 13th or 26th.

My brother’s wife has a cousin who knows about Farmer Moss’s prize winning sheep that have missing. He also says that a nearby farmstead has been burnt to the ground and all residents slain. The only clues as to who did this in many small footprints and a sheep skin bearing farmer moss’s brand that has been crudely made into a cloak. Graffiti written on the side of the farmstead says “HIS HUNGER CONTINUES.” (Poorly spelled, backward S”, perhaps in goblin)

“Ruin Dare” is a popular game played by local children, where they dare each other to get as close to the ruins as possible. Young Neno Rafarek was playing this game and went missing fourteen days ago. 7 Days ago, after most had given up on finding him, Neno walked into the town, in good health and with little to say of what happened to him. He’s been very cruel to small animals and the other children since, and some say his eyes occasionally glow as bright coals in a fire.

"see him there, he didn't have a copper to his name, last month he and two fellows go walking off with some digging tools and a couple bits of armor, couple days later he's spending lot's o' coin, never did see the fellows he went off with again"

The grandest rumor of all, not my idea, but from a novel Roadside Picnic: Deep under the ruins of the monastery is a Glowing Orb, and if you reach it, it will mke your wish come true. Any wish. Every wish. It draws the Evil to the dungeon. The monks built the complex to safeguard that Orb. It says so in the Founding Abbot't manuscript...

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